


plucked fates

by kaermorons



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24034753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaermorons/pseuds/kaermorons
Summary: Jaskier the Bard may have met Geralt of Rivia in a small tavern in Posada, but it wasn’t the first time they’d met.Soulmate/Reincarnation AU, heed the tags
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 17
Kudos: 236





	plucked fates

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this on my phone in a fit of inspiration, sorry for any formatting errors fbdjnxndnxjwn

Eric really wasn’t sure about this.

The endless poking and prodding, shouting to run, then staying still, while nervously stealing glances to the other boys, it was exhausting all on its own. It was hard to remember their names, for they came and went so fast and so impersonally that it all just seemed a blur. There was one boy he remembered, however. He’d always remember Geralt.

Geralt wasn’t his real name, not really. The way Eric wasn’t Eric’s real name. Master Vesemir gave him that name, like all the other boys had been given theirs. In this shared gift, Geralt and Eric reached a silent kind of comfort. Eric preferred to stay quiet while Geralt babbled whatever came to mind, pointing out the horses endlessly. Geralt liked horses.

Geralt didn’t like training, though. He held a sword like it would burn him, and most of his tactics at the beginning were to run and hide until one of the older boys, with red-rimmed yellow eyes, would come and shout him back into the practice ring.

Eric knew he was going to be a Witcher. He knew it in his heart that one day, he’d walk the Path and be a hero, like the stories some of the nicer trainers told under the stars.

A mage came by once every season, a serious woman who scanned her beautiful eyes over the waiting groups and picked ten at seemingly random. It was only later that Eric figured out that the mage could See strings of Destiny, and would pluck them like...well, like strings on something Eric didn’t know yet.

Most of the boys would not return. Ericwas small enough coming to Kaer Morhen that he could see a boy go from a happy and bright friend to a cold, yellow-eyed ball of pain. He was old enough to know what happened to the others. He did not try to talk with the boys who lived through the Changes. Geralt tried to talk to them, but he was shoved away, yelled at until he cried.

Eric did not like seeing Geralt cry.

He hoped Geralt was never picked by the strange mage. He hoped his Destiny would never force him past the safe walls of the barracks. Eric did not know what gods were, but he prayed all the same.

The day Eric dreaded would come arrived on a terribly beautiful spring morning. The mage swept in, cast her eyes over the group, and fell onto Geralt. Eric’s blood turned to ice and his heart dropped into his feet. “No.” He whispered, the word ripped from his mouth.

Suddenly, the mage’s eyes were on him, and she approached, looking over the children like a wrathful shadow. She looked between Eric and Geralt with a confused scowl. “You two. With the others.”

Eric knew then that he would die. This mage would not keep him alive through the Trials, because he’d drawn her ire at the selection time. Geralt was confused, crying again. Eric shushed him and told him to be quiet. “You’ll be fine.” Eric lied. Even the mage heard the weak attempt at comfort, but she did not comment.

The cave is dark, obviously, and Eric knows they had already begun administering the potions to some of the boys when they arrived. Geralt was crying in earnest now, at the sound of the horrible screams. Eric held his hand and tried to be strong.

They were not separated even once, not as their veins were opened to steel, not as icy fire razed their bodies. Geralt held Eric’s hand until the end.

Eric knew he was dying about fifteen seconds before it happened. He turned a weak, powerless gaze to Geralt, who had passed out but was still breathing. The faint light of the cave sputtered out, as he fell into the deepest hole he could have imagined.

_ He was trembling, on the ground. It was white, everywhere, but not cold. Why was he shaking? He looked at his hands, they seemed to still be there. He remembered...his hands were doing something important. _

_ “Geralt.” He gasped, looking around. He had to get back to Geralt, he’d keep crying if he let go of his hand. _

_ “My child. You will see him again.” A voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “Look.” The boy looked down at his hand. Around his pinky was a strong red string. It faded out into the ether around them, not taut, but in a clear direction. _

_ “Can I go to him?” The child asked Destiny. _

_ “You may do as you wish, child.” The voice laughed. “Your Fates have long been tied by your love for him. He will be different. You will be different. But you will find him.” _

_ He took off after the string without another word. _

Julian Alfred Pankrantz, Viscount of Lettenhove, was born on a terribly beautiful spring morning, about sixty years after a small boy named Eric had died in a cave thousands of miles away. He screamed with a set of lungs any bard would love to be born with, and was a terribly serious child for the first few years of his life.

He was always very attentive in his schooling, approaching it with an eerie discipline not suited for a child of nobility. When asked about his rather somber nature, he always gave the same answer: “It’s who I am.”

It made the entire rest of his adolescence rather odd when one day, nine-year-old Julian sprang out of bed with a wide smile on his face and declared he wanted to learn about  _ music. _

It was like someone had stolen the previous Julian away and replaced him with a Julian who had just realized he only had so many years of childhood ahead of him before he would have to be a rather serious adult. His mother was more concerned than his father, who was just glad he didn’t have to fill the rooms with words anymore. Julian spoke a mile a minute and read even faster, devouring stories and textbooks alike. His frenetic zeal for life landed him top of his class in Oxenfurt, and by the time he was eighteen, he knew that he was Destined to go out on the road and share his craft.

His jovial nature faltered only once, when the echoes of screams filled his ears, an endless dark, a tug at his hand, and a tightness on his pinky urged his eyes to a dark corner of a tavern. White hair, yellow eyes, dark armor, swords. But that wasn’t what caught his heart on a nail in the floor. The downturned cast to the Witcher’s eyes and the furrowed brow sparked a whisper of a memory, a dream of a memory.

_ You will see him again. _


End file.
